Text 12840, 130 rader
Skriven 2005-05-20 19:23:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Judicial Debate
=======================
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,157129,00.html

GOP Files to End Debate on Owen Nom 
Friday, May 20, 2005
 
 
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans formally asked the Senate on Friday to 
hold a vote on the confirmation of Priscilla Owen (search), one of a 
handful of President Bush's judicial nominees who have been caught up in 
a procedural firestorm. 

Sen. John Cornyn (search), R-Texas, filed what's called a cloture 
petition, a procedural move intended to force the end of debate on an 
issue. The Senate will vote on the matter Tuesday.

Two-thirds of the 100 senators must vote in favor of ending debate on 
the Owen nomination in order for the move to succeed. The move is an 
effort by Republicans to push through up-or-down votes on some of the 
judicial nominees that Democrats have been fighting against.

Democrats may not have the votes to outright vote against these 
controversial nominees. The minority party in the Senate is arguing it 
has to preserve the right to filibuster — or argue endlessly — in an 
effort to keep judges like Owen, who has been recommended for the 5th 
Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, off the bench.

"If the Senate invokes cloture on the nomination, the Senate will be 
required under its rules to give the Owen nomination a fair up or down 
vote,' Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said in a statement 
Friday.


If the test vote on Owen fails on Tuesday and if she doesn't garner 60 
votes, Frist said he will move to have the Senate declare filibusters 
out of order for Supreme Court and federal appellate court nominees — a 
change that has been labeled the "nuclear option" (search).

Owen is one of 10 appeals court nominees whom Democrats blocked during 
Bush's first term. The president has since renominated seven of them, 
and Democrats have again vowed to filibuster.

"If we were just permitted to cast a vote, a bipartisan majority would 
confirm these nominees today," Cornyn said Friday. "This really amounts 
to a veto. A partisan minority has attempted to cast a veto of majority 
rights, bipartisan majority rights."

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., countered: "This extralegal changing of the 
Senate rules will cause a permanent tear in the Senate fabric because it 
violates a deeply held American value — playing by the rules.

"Using an arbitrary way — presiding officer ruling by fiat — will 
produce a deeply embittered and divided Senate because it tears at the 
heart of the way we operate," Levin said.

The Republican-controlled Senate has been debating Owen's nomination 
since Wednesday. "We will continue that debate," Frist said. "Ten hours, 
20 hours, 30 hours, as many hours as it takes for senators to air their 
views. But at some point, that debate should end and there should be a 
vote."

While it takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, Republicans intend to 
supersede the rule by a simple majority vote. With 55 seats, Republicans 
could afford five defections if all 100 members vote and still prevail 
on the strength of Vice President Dick Cheney's ability to break ties.

Democrats have threatened to slow the Senate's business to a crawl if 
Republicans prevail, and they served up a preview this week by invoking 
a rule that prevented some committees from meeting.

"The attempt to do away with the filibuster is nothing short of clearing 
the trees for the confirmation of an unacceptable nominee to the Supreme 
Court," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said. He accused 
the president of an attempt to "rewrite the Constitution and reinvent 
reality" with his demand for a yes-or-no vote on all nominees.

A group of Senate centrists have been trying to come up with an 
alternative to the nuclear option that would also block Reid from 
filibustering all of Bush's most controversial nominees at the same 
time. But as of Friday afternoon, a compromise had not yet been reached.

Santorum: 'I Meant No Offense'

Meanwhile, Sen. Rick Santorum said Friday he "meant no offense" by 
referring to Adolf Hitler while defending the GOP's right to ban 
judicial filibusters (search).

"Referencing Hitler was meant to dramatize the principle of an argument, 
not to characterize my Democratic colleagues," Santorum, the No. 3 
Republican in the GOP leadership in the Senate, said of his remarks 
Thursday.

Passions have been running high as senators argue over whether 
Republicans should allow the out-of-power Democrats to use Senate 
filibusters to effectively thwart President Bush from reshaping the 
nation's courts to his liking.

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., came under fire in March for comparing 
Hitler's Nazis and the Senate GOP plan to block Democrats from 
filibustering. Santorum, a Pennsylvanian, criticized Byrd's remarks at 
the time, saying the Nazi references "lessen the credibility of the 
senator and the decorum of the Senate."

But on Thursday, Santorum said that Democratic protests over Republican 
efforts to ensure confirmation votes would be like the Nazi dictator 
seizing Paris and then saying: "I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me? 
How dare you bomb my city? It's mine."

Santorum later said in a release that his remark "was a mistake and I 
meant no offense."

The Republican Jewish Coalition applauded the statement. "Sen. Santorum 
is sensitive to the effect of his words and the inappropriateness of the 
analogy," Executive Director Matthew Brooks said.

If senators are forced to vote next week on Owen's nomination, centrists 
say a historic confrontation is sure to follow over whether filibusters 
of appellate and Supreme Court nominees should be prohibited during the 
rest of the Bush presidency.

"Once you start into the procedural votes, the real procedural votes on 
the first judge, then it's going to be very difficult to put the genie 
back into the bottle," said Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio. "I think most of 
us look at that as once you have that first vote, it's going to be very 
difficult to get a deal done."

FOX News' Major Garrett and The Associated Press contributed to this 
report.

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